


Indifference Is the Truest Disease of the Heart (But You Got it all Wrong)

by RadicalPrep



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 12:36:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RadicalPrep/pseuds/RadicalPrep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi thinks about the statues in the palaces of the capital, white marble modelled so perfectly it looks like flesh. Oh why, why is it that men like him have to forget beauty only to being reminded of it in moments like this?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indifference Is the Truest Disease of the Heart (But You Got it all Wrong)

**Author's Note:**

> So I read SNK and I still don't know what hit me.
> 
> Just a quick warning: I'm not native. I write in English cause it's fun and because why not? Still, I feel like I need to apologise. Sorry about awkward phrasings, misuse of prepositional and phrasal verbs! Them phrasal verbs, man.

Solang in tausend Formen Schönheit blüht,  
schlägt auch ein Herz, zu singen und zu sagen.  
 _Den Pessimisten, Hugo von Hofmannsthal_

 

Amidst the remains of long forgotten people, Eren broods.

Next to him, a pile of garbage collected from all over the courtyard: rotten wooden tables and chairs, rusted iron bars, dulled blades, wheels and broken household tools. Hidden dangers and tetanus and little cuts that Eren could probably heal in a matter of minutes.

Eren sympathises with the junk in the courtyard.

Maybe the junk hates Lance Corporal Levi too.

He's all alone now because everybody else are having dinner but he still has to clean up the yard.

He doesn't really hate the Lance Corporal, though. He's just not very hot for punishments he feels he didn't deserve.

Eren sometimes thinks that nobody, nobody could ever match his dedication to kill all those damned beasts. He just knows it, and it is not because he thinks it's dumb that he has to clean up stuff instead of doing something useful, no, it's his guts. Eren doesn't believe in flesh and muscles, Eren does believe in his purpose, and that's what keeps him alive.

From time to time, he realizes he's not an adult yet and he feels embarrassed, he squeezes his genitals and recalls this or that lengthy speech about him being a brat by yours truly Lance Corporal. Still, it is nice to have a purpose in life, and if given the chance, Eren would smash his Purpose on Levi's face every fucking day of the week, just like when he told him he was not afraid to die (because he is not, because of his power, because he's stronger than Levi can or will ever admit) and the Lance Corporal kicked him and called him an insolent little shit and other names.

Eren tugs at a piece of brass that emerges from the mountain of forgotten and broken things he has built.

He has never saw Lance Corporal Levi kick anybody else. Not his squad members, not the new recruits, only titan's ass.

It makes him angry because, most of all, Eren is tired of all the things that he didn't want to happen always happening.

 

Eren still scowls and Levi cannot believe his own eyes.

The defiant look in the boy's eyes is too much to handle. He longs for the murmur of his shiny boot rubbing against rough cotton. He longs for tending to Eren's growing hatred and then harvesting it, making little crowns and badges out of it, like you do with daisies, and then pin it on his chest. One can dismiss anger, but cannot forgot hate.

Eren is saying something about how he feels he's been unjustly punished. He keeps trying not to yell, to keep things civil and not to disrespect his superior. Levi wishes Eren would diss him, cause that's just what he needs right now but instead he has to try to smother the desire to grab Eren's shoulders and just shake him up until he loses balance.

“Oh shut up, you goddamned brat. You get what you deserve. Never forget it.”

Eren's big eyes (so big!) glitter under his dark eyebrows.

Levi thinks about the statues in the palaces of the capital, white marble modelled so perfectly it looks like flesh. Oh why, why is it that men like him have to forget beauty only to being reminded of it in moments like this?

“I'm tired of this shit, _Sir_. You don't like me, I get it, but you sure enjoy to ground me and-”

“Do you even hear yourself talking?”

Levi knows he's pushing it too far.

He's not a strategist but he has seen too many battles not to pick up some knowledge. He has been alone way too much time not to pick up the hints and he has been an officer for way too much time to just stop being one. There's just not enough time for all of this. So cage it, beat it, slash it and cut it and kick it and bite it. It hurts both. It hurts both but it is what needs to be done, Levi thinks, it is the closest thing to affection Levi can indulge in.

“All you ever do is just calling me names, calling me a brat, a little shit, useless... _You_ should hear yourself talking! And all you ever do is talk about _me_ , complaining about _me_... Just fucking stop it.”

Eren is close to Levi now, so close he needs to push him away. Eren smells like dust and sweat and fennel.

“Just fucking stop it” he says, just before leaning in and seizing Levi's by his shoulders.

They kiss and it's sloppy, rough and wet but for a second Levi doesn't even mind about the drool trickling down on the corner of Eren's mouth.

“Just stop it.” Eren mutters, while his hands go down all the way to Levi's hips and Levi's hands are pressed on Eren's neck.

Yes, it is nice to have the possibility of complaining about the things you love, instead of fearing for your life and the life of the others all day long. When people are so keen on protecting their own life that they actually forget what life is all about. Sometimes things just happen...

Levi pulls Eren's hair and tries not to think.

All the lessons about choice and responsibility all mingle and dissolve in his head and Levi snaps out of it when Eren stops kissing him, bends down and buries his head in the nook between Levi's neck and shoulder, his arms still squeezing him so tightly.

Levi digs his short nails into Eren's neck and just wait for it to pass.

 

“You see now, Eren? You see why I have to do what I do.” Levi whispers.

Eren nods and focuses on Levi's fingers on his neck. He thinks about how everything has to be so complicated and he feels like a child again. And he doesn't want to be a child anymore. He can't help but feeling this is so big, this is so important, this must mean something.

“This just won't do.”

Levi frees himself from Eren's arms.

They're standing still in front of each other, Levi's eyes unreadable as always, Eren's like two terrifying mirrors.

Eren knows Levi is going to walk away and that there is nothing he can do to prevent it.

But it doesn't matter. He will come back.

Eren clenches his teeth and reminds himself that Levi will come back.

When Eren will be older, when beauty needn't hide behind gruesome things, when the titans will only be a memory, or maybe tomorrow, maybe in a month, Levi will come back.

**Author's Note:**

> You guys should listen to "All You Need is Me" by Morrissey because holy fuck just hear it and then tell to my face it doesn't talk about the heichou.  
> The quote at the beginning comes from a poem by Hugo von Hofmannstahl, "Den Pessimisten" (to the pessimists) and a rough translation could be: "As long as Beauty blooms in thousands different forms // A heart will beat, to sing and to say/tell". Oh well, I'm a crappy translator.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you liked it! I wanted to write it because the above mentioned song is too good, but I think that canon!Levi is much more fatherly towards Eren than he cares to admit. Sometimes it just shows. Thanks for reading.


End file.
